Would-be Molester Caught With Help of Alleged Pimp is Convicted of Attempted Child Prostitution

A would-be child rapist, caught with the help of an alleged pimp, was convicted of attempted child prostitution last week. We expect the judge to throw away the key when Dell Rainbow Vanderschuit is sentenced on June 16. As we reported in March, Vanderschuit has already served four years in Fort Leavenworth for raping a 13-year-old girl.

The Arizona Republic's columnist-turned-reporter, Richard Ruelas, has a piece today on some of the facts presented at trial and the role in the case played by Chris Johnson, the man we talked to in December who tipped off cops to Vanderschuit's perverted desires. Though police at first had described Johnson as a pimp, Ruelas says Johnson told the jury he encountered Vanderschuit while helping a "slender yoga instructor" who had fallen on hard times and was working temporarily as a prostitute. The Republic also ran a nice picture of the unlikely hero.

As Johnson told us, he drove her to meet clients and "watched out" for her,but wasn't her pimp. He said he had been working with the woman onenight," listening surreptiously to her conversation with a client whoturned out to be Vanderschuit, when the ex-con told the woman that hewanted her to arrange for him to have sex with a kid.

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Cops later had undercover officers call Vanderschuit to see how far hewould go. The California man made several incriminating statementsbefore getting spooked.

Ray Stern has worked as a newspaper reporter in Arizona for more than two decades. He's won many awards for his reporting, including the Arizona Press Club's Don Bolles Award for Investigative Journalism.